Chilean President Gabriel Buric announced on Saturday that his country will join South Africa in its lawsuit against Israel before the International Court of Justice, on charges of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip.
Buric said in a speech he delivered before his country’s Congress that his government decided to “join the lawsuit submitted by South Africa before the International Court of Justice, within the framework of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.”
It is noteworthy that at the end of December 2023, South Africa filed a lawsuit against Israel before the International Court of Justice on the grounds that it violated the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention of Genocide.
The International Court of Justice issued a preliminary ruling in the case in late January, ordering Israel to take all measures within its authority to prevent acts that could fall under the Genocide Convention.
The court also ordered Tel Aviv to prevent and punish genocide, ensure the flow of aid to Gaza, and preserve evidence of crimes committed in the devastated Strip.
Last May, the court issued a mandatory order to stop the military operation in Rafah, but Israel refused to comply with the decision.
Other parties
Since the initial rulings, several countries have come forward to intervene in the case using a clause in the ICJ Statute that allows third parties to join the proceedings if they consider that they have “an interest of a legal nature that may be affected by any decision in the case.”
So far, several countries have submitted requests to join the case, including Mexico, Turkey, Libya, Nicaragua, and Colombia.
Since last October 7, Israel has been waging a devastating war on the Gaza Strip, leaving more than 117,000 Palestinians dead and wounded, most of them children and women, and about 10,000 missing amid massive destruction and famine that claimed the lives of children and the elderly.